The invention, in some embodiments, relates to the field of mechanical grippers and manipulators and more particularly, but not exclusively, to anthropomorphic mechanical grippers. The invention, in some embodiments, relates to the field of keyhole surgery and more particularly, but not exclusively, to mechanical devices useful for performing keyhole surgery.
Anthropomorphic mechanical grippers that resemble human hands having at least two articulated digits that may be brought together to grasp an object are desirable.
Control of anthropomorphic grippers for human operation is exceptionally simple: an associated control system translates the hand motions of an operator, such as grasping, directly to motions of the gripper. For the operator the use of such a mechanical gripper is intuitive and easy to learn.
In the field of robots, robot-controlled anthropomorphic grippers are versatile and adaptable analogous to the hands of primates.
Anthropomorphic mechanical grippers have been described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,865,376; 4,921,293 and 6,244,644; Japanese patent application published as JP2006255872A, Chinese patent application CN 101214659A published as CN 200810056395; Banks J L (1994) Design and control of an anthropomorphic robotic finger with multi-point tactile sensation, MSc thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology May 2001; Gómez G, Hernandez A, Eggenberger Hotz P, (2006) An adaptive neural controller for a tendon driven robotic hand in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Autonomous Systems (IAS-9). T. Arai et al. (Eds.), IOS Press, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 298-307 as well as the works of Carl Pisaturo and of Gabriel Gómez (such as the Yokoi Robot Hands) described on the Internet.
A model of a human finger, suitable for use in education, has been described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,466,800.
Additional background art includes U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,312,435; 6,053,933; 5,456,684; 5,762,458; 3,990,321; 6,394,998; 5,797,900; 6,634,184; 7,367,772 and 5,792,135.
Anthropomorphic grippers are generally very complex assemblies comprising many small parts. Consequently, fabrication, assembly and repairs of such grippers are very expensive. Additionally, the ability to make small grippers is very limited.